


Giving Up

by kingsrangergilan



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Mention of OCs - Freeform, Swearing, coffee going to waste, so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7353955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsrangergilan/pseuds/kingsrangergilan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley is dying. Halt and Gilan take this opportunity to fight over old and unspoken disputes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giving Up

Gilan pulled the door to Crowley's room softly closed. He was hunched and exhausted from wiping Crowley's forehead with cool cloths and doing anything else he could think of in order to stave off his mentor's fever. Although Halt had technically been Gilan's master, he tended to think of Crowley as his teacher as well.  
Halt and Crowley had still been young when he first met them, and for all intents and purposes inseparable. Gilan remembered when the two of them used to meet with his father, Sir. David. Crowley always tried to interpret Halt's overwhelming accent for David, and Halt would insist that he knew what he was doing, damnit. Gilan felt like their kid a little bit, and sometimes wished they would just go ahead and adopt him.  
Gilan hated to admit it, but he had always been closer to Crowley. He asked Crowley how to fix arrows, how to balance castle life with ranger life, how to make coffee. Whenever he asked Halt for help, Halt would just slam his coffee on the table and order him around. Just like every other teacher. But Crowley was more of a mentor. More of the type of person you could ask for help from anytime, without being afraid of failure or embarrassment.  
He sat down at Crowley's table and rested his head against the back of the chair. He sprang up, rifled through the pantry for some unfathomed cure, then sat back down. His children shouted as they played outside, but Gilan didn't hear them. He had ears only for the hesitant rise and fall of Crowley's breath in the room over.  
He only raised his head when he heard Blaze whinny in recognition. So another Ranger. Gilan braced himself, and smiled. He looked on the bright side-more help! Keeping his spirits up, he dug around in the pantry for a second mug and prepared a cup of coffee for the new guest. But when he heard the twins and his ranger apprentice, Lawrence, greet the visitor outside, he froze in his tracks. Regaining composure, Gilan crowned the coffee with a healthy dose of honey, and he waited to greet his other ranger teacher. What a reunion, he thought ruefully.  
Halt came in loudly without a sound trailed by Lawrence and Gilan's son Rostam. Rostam was perched on Lawrence's back and trying to hug Halt at the same time, but the grizzled ranger ignored the two boys and stared straight at Gilan. Gilan shifted, scared to death, then smiled.  
"I'm glad you could come!" He greeted his former master.  
"I'm not here for you," Halt replied, and pushed Gilan aside. "You're not the one dying, unfortunately."  
"Don't say that!" Gilan tried to step between Halt and the door to Crowley's room, less abashed by the attack on himself and more worried about Halt's prediction.  
"He won't die! His breathing is improving and the fever could break any minute. Now, don't you dare go in there and provoke him."  
Halt pushed Gilan out of the way a second time on his way to Crowley's door.  
"You don't know anything," he hissed at Gilan.  
"You don't know what's between us. You don't know what it's like. I don't understand."  
"Lawrence, Rostam, go back outside." Gilan ordered. Then he turned back to Halt.  
"Understand what?" He asked, cocking his head to the side like a puppy. Halt could not stand it.  
"Why are you commandant? Why did he have you here to take care of him? Why is he leaving his belongings to you? You're the least responsible person I know!"  
"I don't know what you're talking about."  
"Listen, Gilan" Halt used the same condescending tone as when Gilan was a yippy apprentice, "I know you're working for your dad and the military. I know you're keeping tabs on them for us, the Rangers, but sometimes I wonder if you're just stabbing us in the back. You're teaching your Ranger apprentice swordsmanship. You're teaching your sword apprentice how to use a saxe knife. You're teaching how to sneak and spy just like you. You're married to some immigrant we have no idea about."  
"She's a diplomat..." Gilan tried to cut in.  
"Whatever. You know what I'm saying. You're not a true ranger. You're not one of us. And you don't deserve to be commandant, traitor!"  
"You're going to wake him up!" Gilan kicked Halt's feet out from under him. Halt, without thinking, grabbed Gilan by the middle and flipped him over his shoulder onto the floor. Gilan jumped up and kicked Halt in the chest, but Halt grabbed his leg and twisted it, making Gilan slam into the cabin floor.  
"You can't fucking do anything," Halt observed, nonchalant.  
"Shut up" said Gilan, from the floor, and he yanked a cord wrapped around Halt's feet. By moving towards Gilan, Halt had stepped into a trap.  
Funny, Gilan thought, how no one seemed to look down.  
"I made you some coffee," Gilan threw as an olive branch after he and Halt had been on the floor for several minutes, "I think it's still hot."  
"Fuck you," replied Halt, but he untangled himself and stood up. He helped Gilan up to his feet. Gilan hugged him. Halt just stood there.  
They drank their cups of coffee in respective silence across the table from one another. They both kept glancing over to Crowley's bedroom door when they didn't think the other was looking. Gilan was itchy, he needed to do something, he felt so useless in that stalemate, the one he had found himself trapped in as an apprentice. Halt was trying to get under his skin, so Gilan refused to budge.  
"So," it was finally Halt that gave up and spoke, "do you think we need Malcom?" Malcom, the healer from Norgate fief had become the de facto medical expert for the Ranger Corps since Halt's poisoning.  
"No," Gilan replied, then tried to soften his approach. "I've done everything possible for him. Either the fever breaks soon, or-" his breath hitched. He was afraid he was going to cry in front of Halt. He spins around, trying to change topics.  
"Halt," he asks, "I was wondering, since I'm not an apprentice any more, can I ask you one question if you can ask me one in return?"  
"Sure. Whatever." Halt is sick of this tiny cabin and how tall Gilan is.  
"Do you love Crowley?"  
Halt squints at Gilan, and Gilan looks him straight in the eye. Halt could lie, but for once he feels like the truth can't hurt anymore.  
"Yes."  
"Go see him," Gilan invites, going against his own previous orders and fears, "I think you need to. I could never bear to come between the two of you." Halt went in quickly and closed the door behind him. Gilan resisted the urge to listen at the door, and instead stared imploringly at him coffee. He knew Halt would do anything for Crowley. He had never seen his former master this angry before, but he figured it was because he was just worried about Crowley. Loving someone is hard to show, Gilan knew, especially if you weren't used to it.  
He didn't have to press his ear up to the door to hear Halt's sobs. Gilan's heart broke at the sound of it.  
"If I could spare his life, if I could trade his life for mine," Gilan swore to himself. The coffee cup shattered in his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> A few references:  
> • The line "I'm not here for you" and "If I could spare his life, if I could trade his life for mine" are from the musical Hamilton.  
> •Gilan thinking funny how people never seem to look down is a play off of Will Treaty's saying "funny how people never seem to look up."  
> •Gilan's son Rostam is named after Rostam Batmanglij, a member of the band Vampire Weekend. Gilan is said to be married to a diplomat, making Rostam a diplomat's son. "Diplomat's Son" is a song by Vampire Weekend.


End file.
